One Reason Why You Should Blog a Book: To Build Your Writer Platform

A Blogged Book Gives You Exposure & Builds Platform

Many writers enjoy spending time alone in their “lonely garret” with only the company of a hot cup of coffee or tea, a computer (or a pad of paper and a pencil), and a pet of some sort curled up at their feet. In fact, that’s what most writers like best. To become a published author, however, you must come out of the garret and socialize. You must talk with people and engage them in your work. You must get involved and interact with others. If you don’t do this, you won’t develop an audience for your work. You won’t build a base of readers—an author platform—for yourself and for your books.

If platform represents new terminology to you, it’s time to become familiar with this word … very familiar, very fast. A strong and sturdy author’s platform can consist of a combination of many elements, such as:

expert status

numerous appearances on radio and Internet talk shows and television talk and news shows

frequent guest posts on other people’s blogs

a well-known presence in online forums and social networks

large numbers of followers on social networking sites

popular videos, podcasts, or blogs

frequent interviews on other people’s podcasts, videos, or blogs

your own Internet, radio, or television show

many published articles or books in print and Internet publications

an extremely large mailing list

frequent talks and presentations given to small, medium, and large groups

You don’t need all of these platform elements to actually have an author’s platform. One of these elements, if large enough, can comprise a platform. The more elements you use to build your platform, though, the stronger and larger it becomes.

Most of the items on this list have little to do with writing. That’s what makes blogging such a great platform-building option; it involves writing and lots of it.

Traditionally the best way to build a platform involved going out and speaking to audiences, but today you can speak to your audience online via a blog. In fact, you can speak to a lot more people every day through a popular blog than you ever could via public speaking. (If you want, you can even speak using videos and recordings uploaded easily to your blog as well.)

Imagine one thousand or more people reading your blog every day (a pretty awesome thought). That adds up to a lot of readers per month … enough to impress an agent or a publisher. If even two percent of those readers purchased a book you authored, that would amount to twenty books per day. That’s 140 books per week, or over 7,000 books in one year. A publisher would be happy with those sales numbers.

According to Nielsen BookScan, a data provider for the book-publishing industry that compiles point-of-sale data for book sales, the average U.S. book now sells less than 250 copies per year and less than 3,000 copies over its lifetime. That’s a pretty unimpressive number.

The other platform elements listed above have their place and remain important if you want to become a traditionally published author or sell a lot of self-published books. Remember, however, I said one platform element, if large enough, could produce a sound author’s platform? In fact, a successful blog can do just that. If you write a great blog and manage to draw enough readers, this alone can prove impressive enough as a platform element in a book proposal to land you a literary agent or a publisher—with or without other elements.

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3 thoughts on “One Reason Why You Should Blog a Book: To Build Your Writer Platform”

I self published a chapbook of poetry back in 2005 if I remember correctly, it was a chapbook of poetry but I just did not really have the knowledge and to do any kind of self-promoting or makreting. Now, yers later I would like to try and finding all alleys to promote the book and I have enough material to do the next to books of poetry, I am constantly scribbling on things. hits at the oddest moments. I did try to peddle it on my Facebook page but I am unaware of any reponses, yet I was on Amazon awhile back and what do you know, there is my book, only it was listed at different prices for new or used and not the amount I had put to purchase when I self published. I also noticed that there is an amount there that I feel mat be from sales of my book up until now but I do not know how to find out or who I would talk to. I am very interested in starting to blog since I have been told by those who know me I would enjoy it, be good at it and most importantly make money to supplement my disability so I wanted to try and see if I could get some info on all these topics and what my best and direct route would be to take and enter the world of blogging for money. Would a person first create a home page perhaps come up with a clever name, also can you blog abou an all different topics on one site also can you blog about? ooking forward to feedback when you can and thank you.=)

I have a Facebook page for my English tea room. I post pictures of new things, recipes and just what is going on. Would you suggest taking one of my novels and posting it in parts, almost like a series? Thank you for your thoughts.
Jacqueline Gillam Fairchild
Her Majesty’s English Tea Room at Fairchild’s